Ballado O Scmalz

Ballado o Soldatie

It is one necessary evil of the Western cinema audience, to take what passes as foreign cinema, as passing as. if not unusual, then at least, very good. People tend too often towards dispassionate praise of some-come-quickly exotic cinema; whether, it is in fact, inferior to an Hollywood or Ealing equivalent: and to point to the un-apparent merits in films from foreign climes, whilst overlooking or ignoring the beauty "sometimes" available in the domestic product. This would appear to suit the case of Ballado o Soldatie, a second-rate Soviet movie about war; nonetheless, the recipient of much deserved praise, and many prizes.

A frail—but in no way tenuous—plot, woven from halting moments in the life of a soldier returning home on leave, has been sincerely dealt with, but has no great substance or Imaginative phrases from which a capable director might have profited. Grigori Chukhrai exploits all the better known graphics of the cinema, and some of the lesser known ones too: his use of the Dovzhenko close-up is congruous; his overuse of certain shot constructions, tedious. The one real merit of the film is in the performance of Shanna Prokhorenko and Vladimir Iva-shov (both from the State Institute of Cinematography), as the young couple. They display little amount of technique and learned acting, but are nevertheless, pure and fresh in their attempts.

Chukhrai's earlier film, The Forty First, was in every way much more satisfying material. It is amazing how a film such as Ballado can be praised so highly, on such unwarranted ground, it is. In fact, no better (or worse) than an average American or English product. The English dialogue dubbing, finally, is the most ludicrous, most nonsensical effort of cheap commercialism I have ever seen and heard.

—M.J.W.